Though still not of age, Alexias manages to hold off his uncle and protect his stepmother and stepsister for now. News of his father’s death means Alexias must face a new threat from his uncle Strymon, who asserts his right to take possession of his dead brother’s property including his wife and family. Shortly after, the Athenian campaign in Sicily ends in a disastrous defeat and Alexias learns his father has been captured and made a slave to work in a quarry where he subsequently died. The baby is in fact a girl and Alexias takes no action against her. Alexias cannot bear to perform this task, and though he fears the consequences if he is found out, he destroys the letter and pretends he never received it. Fortunately, it does not last.Ī letter from his father arrives instructing Alexias that should his stepmother give birth to a girl, Alexias is to tear the baby from her mother before they can form a bond and allow the child to die from exposure. A couple of older men hope to make Alexias their lover and embarrass him with their bad poetry and night-time serenades outside his home. That and the labour on the farm transform his body and soon he is turning heads as he walks through the city. Though, at 16, Alexias is too young to serve in the military, he takes the initiative of some combat training. When the Athenians embark on an expedition to Sicily, a strategy championed by Alkibiades before his downfall, Myron is called up into the army, leaving Alexias to take care of their farms and his pregnant stepmother.

Much of the talk around the city is about Alkibiades – an Athenian general who has defected to the Spartans. This is also the era of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431-404BCE). When liked he could make any hard thing seem easy, and the natural thing to do yet he could make something familiar look new and strange, so that one was surprised not to have seen its beauty, or not to have cast it away in disgust. Alexias has begun hanging around a circle that listens to the wisdom and teaching of an old man, Sokrates, much to the disapproval of his stern, traditionalist father, Myron. They are a family of fairly high standing with a few farms and other properties.

The Last of the Wine is the story of Alexias, a young man coming of age during the Golden Age of Athens (480-404BCE), living with his father and stepmother in the city. It is immersive and relatable with a plot that will affect readers deeply and capped with a great ending. The Last of the Wine is a powerful story of love and war, family and friendship, democratic ideals and failings, set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

The last of the wine by mary renault